Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Pot calling the kettle black!

Commentary By Ron Beasley


This takes a lot of nerve not to mention hypocrisy:


Likud: US meddling in Israeli politics



US President Barack Obama's administration's criticism of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's policies has crossed the line into interfering in Israeli politics, top Likud ministers and MKs said Tuesday. 


[.....]



The charges of American interference began April 16 when Yediot Aharonot quoted Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel telling an unnamed Jewish leader: "In the next four years there is going to be a permanent-status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of two states for two peoples, and it doesn't matter to us at all who is prime minister [of Israel]."

Likud Minister-without-Portfolio Yossi Peled said Tuesday that the statement was inappropriate and was just one of many examples of American interference in Israeli politics since Netanyahu's election in February.  



Of course Likud has been interfering with US politics for generations via their US proxy AIPAC. (in addition to spying)  Of course as Josh Marshall reminds us they have a good reason to be upset - Israeli political parties that have a problem with a US President don't stay in power very long.



There's no shortage of discussion of the fact that there's a strong Israel lobby in the US which can exercise a great deal of pressure when a US administration applies pressure on Israel. What gets much less discussion in the US is the other side of this complex relationship. No Israeli government can last for long if it gets seriously out of step with an incumbent US administration, especially if that administration is popular at home. Indeed, over the last two decades, two Likud governments have fallen in substantial measure because they had gotten out of step with the US and were perceived in Israel as having failed to manage the US relationship -- the Shamir government in the early 90s and the first Netanyahu government in the late 1990s. As many other commentators have noted, failing to keep the US-Israel relationship on track is something akin to the 'third rail' of Israeli politics.


Standing up to Netanyahu and Likud is one of the few things Obama has done right.



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1 comment:

  1. Peter G.June 3, 2009 at 5:11 AM

    Good post Ron. Too often I see posts (rarely here) that suggest that AIPAC somehow constitutes some sort of secret government that controls US foreign policy. They do enjoy some serious influence of course but it is all too rarely pointed out that Israeli governments must likewise earn the support of the US government or their majority is in peril. I think that Israelis in general are well aware that they are very dependent on the good will of whatever administration hold office in the US. There is hope in this for the two state solution.

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